Japanese Organic Farmer's Enemy....

One of the things that "organic" farmers usually battle with are bugs. As you may have noticed in the earlier blogs there are definately no shortage of them around my "farm", but we also have another problem. Our house was built in a rice field (literally) and is still surrounded by rice fields on all sides. The main problem with rice farming in this generation is that it is not profitable enough to do as your main source of income and therefore people do it as a "side job", trying to spend as little time doing it as possible.

One of the "inventions" that has helped to save time is the spraying helicopter. Within a few minutes the whole rice field is sprayed via a remote controlled helicopter..... unfortunately it is not all that is sprayed! Despite the fact that they always do it on calm evenings, the spray still goes all over the surrounding fields, making true "organic" farming impossible unless you own all the surrounding fields for miles around. Oh well, I guess I will just have to expand my farming to cover all the surrounding area.... but maybe I should get my one field under control first!

New Obsession

I have no idea how the internet works. I really don't! I don't understand how people make a lot of money out of it, but I am happy that there are so many things that you can download for free! With it being far too hot here to go outside for more than 10 minutes at a time, my latest obsession has become viewing the statistics of those who are looking at this blog. Thanks to my brother I somehow managed to install a counter to show how many people were looking at the site, but what I didn't realise was that the free software would also do a whole lot of analysing for me. I can check what country (and what city in each country) people are from, how long they are looking at the site, which site they were referred from, whether it is their first visit to the site - just about everything apart from what they ate for breakfast! It is kind of fun to keep checking it, but with only about 9 hits every day it gets a little repeditive! Anyway, if anyone is interested in installing the software onto their own blog/website the address is: http://my.statcounter.com/

The builders/plumbers/electricians all seem to be on holiday at the moment. The toilet has arrived, but is in the living room covered in plastic. The oven etc are all in the kitchen, but are not connected to the gas. The muffin mix is ready, but there is no where to cook it. Maybe next month......

Rhubarb or Hostas?

As you may have guessed, this year there has been record rainfall here in Japan. All around the country there are stories of landslides, houses collapsing etc., so although we are feeling a little "soggy" here right now we are also feeling very lucky that nothing drastic has happened. Due to the continual rain the garden updates have been a little fewer than I had hoped, but I think the rainy season officially finished today (with a pretty dramatic thunderstorm....) so hopefully from now there should be some more progress in the garden. The rain has made it clear about one thing - hostas love rain and rhubarb doesn't - as the photos show! Last year my hostas struggled to even appear, but this year they seem to be loving the rain and multiplying all over the place. The rhubarb however is another story - two out of three plants have now rotted away and the other is on its last legs too. I'm thinking of trying it in the tunnel house next year - it can't be worse!







The best thing that happened today was that the scafolding was finally removed (sorry the photo was taken in the middle of the thunder storm). That means the steps to the front door can now be completed and the final touches made. I chose all the light fittings etc. yesterday so things really seem to be coming to an end (or a start!). The oven and kitchen benches were also put in today so now we are just waiting on the toilet and bathroom sink. The children are convinced that they will be the first into the new shower!


A different view of the lounge - the colour looks a little lighter in real life!

More Colours

When I asked the wallpaper man today if many people used the colours we were using he said "no" and "I am happy they don't".... apparently it is taking him twice as long as it usually does as the paper I chose is different to the normal one and requires a lot more preparation of the walls. Too bad! The kitchen and bathroom and half the stairs were finished today and he is sure he will have the rest finished by lunch time tomorrow. As with yesterday's photos the colours don't really show up properly in the photos, but here is a sneak peek.
Top photo = kitchen, middle = bathroom and bottom = stairs (living room)

Colour

The thing I have been most anxious about our new "guest house" is the colours I chose for the different rooms. Here in Japan there is very little use of colours in houses - occasionally you will see some green rooms, but in general everything is cream - cream walls and cream ceilings. Anyway, in some brave (or possibly stupid....) moment I decided that I didn't want all the walls cream and opted for quite strong colours throughout the house. However, after chosing I've thought many times about calling up and changing them to the safe "cream", but never quite got around to it. So today was the first test when we waited until after 7pm (yes the paper-man is working overtime right now) and went upstairs to check out the upstairs rooms which were finished today (well there is still the carpet to be laid....). The result seems to be better than I hoped. I chose one feature wall colour for each room upstairs and they both seem to have worked out okay. Even Tom came back saying "they look really good" - I think he is as anxious as I am as he left it completely to me to chose them.
The photos were taken at dusk with no lighting so they are not the exact colours, but pretty close. Don't forget to state your colour preference when you book - keeping in mind the green room is a little bigger than the yellow one!
Check in tomorrow to hopefully see the kitchen, bathroom and living room colours - or maybe next week!

Stop, start, stop, start....

We had a three-day weekend this weekend and I had to go away for all of it to run an outdoor education program in Yamaguchi prefecture. I assumed that while I was away there would be no real progress on the guest house (it being a holiday and all), but when I came back the outside was completely painted, the stairs varnished and the walls half prepared for the wallpaper. From what Tom told me they were being given a hurry-along by the site manager so that it would be finished within the time that they promised us. Great I thought - at this rate it should be finished in a few weeks...... and then of course no one appeared for 3 days and progress seems to be halted again due to rain. Maybe another month and we might be finally there!
On a better note another stained glass window has been put in - the first of the NZ theme ones. This one has been made like a "sandwich" and therefore there are three layers of glass and no lead at all. It looks great from both the stairs and the inside of the bedroom.
My "peaceful place" is also taking shape. The benefit of working with a company that is small is that we can keep making changes as we go and I think this one is the best of them all. This is "my" window seat where I (or I guess I will allow others to sit there too....) can sit and read my book after a hard day slaving over the hot steaming jam jars. Speaking of which, here is my current collection. There is a local festival at the end of the month and they have asked if they can sell my jams there as a representative "local product". Now I just need to get around to making a few more and really start to promote them properly. Tom is working on a web site and hopefuly after the summer I will be able to concentrate fully on them. That's the plan anyway......

Colourful Critters

I am not someone who spends a long time in the shower or relaxing in the tub. In fact, for me the purpose of taking a shower is so that I don't offend anyone who comes within a metre radius of me. But today, after spending a couple of hours in the garden in the Japanese heat and humidity, the shower was like heaven! If I hadn't had to go to the dentist (again) I think I could have spent all afternoon in there under the cold tap!
Something that seems to be really enjoying the heat here at the moment are the caterpillars. They are big and in a strange way very beautiful (as long as they are not eating my parsley). I'm not sure if you can tell from the photo, but the black caterpillars are currently having a feast around the rice fields. There are thousands of them and they just munch full time until all the leaves are gone and then move onto the next patch - as long as that "next patch" is not my garden I don't really care!





So far they don't seem to be effecting any of my vegetables and even the crows have been keeping away lately. Here is today's harvest - it's time to start making tomato juice, tomato sauce, tomato soup, tomato jelly...... again!

Inside the house...

Today I came to two amazing conclusions. Number One - even if the sun is finally shining after three weeks of continual rain the garden is too muddy to do more than look at from a distance (a typhoon is forecast for the weekend so chances of it drying out in the next few days are not incredibly high...).

Number two - it is very difficult to take pictures that give you any idea of what the inside of our "guest house" is really like. The flooring was put down today and one of my stained glass windows was also fitted - my friend made it for me and is also making four windows for the upstairs room - all with a NZ theme. This one can be seen from the living room and the kitchen.
Anyway, here are a couple of photos that may give you an idea of what stage things are at inside the house, or then again maybe they won't - either way it is better than writing about the weather again!

Living Room - looking towards the front door. Plenty of windows for light and ventilation - sorry no air conditioning is being planned!

The stairs - directly opposite the front door. Very easy climbing - unlike the original plans where they were more like a ladder.....

Too hot for anything but taking photos!

The hottest months of the year here are said to be July and August.... if that is the case then I am going to die again this summer! It seems to be more than hot enough here now that the rain has stopped. The garden is responding well (despite being neglected) and as you can see the "Guest House" is also progressing well. The roof is fully on and the outside walls seem to be more or less finished too. A coat of paint, the spouting on and then I think the scaffolding can come down. It's fun to sneak in there every night after the builders go home and check out the inside progress too.
It's too hot to work in the garden, but I did force myself outside to take some photos of the garden.


Burgundy Okra - another one of those plants that I thought that I would try and grow, but have no idea how to cook!











Butternut pumpkins - growing happily in their beds of weeds....














Tomatoes are begin to ripen everywhere, which the crows are very happy about. I wonder if my black strips of plastic are going to make any difference!








After everyone else started to harvest their beans I finally got around to planting mine. They don't seem to mind their late start and are growing like rockets!

A little late, but...

Okay, so about 2 weeks ago all the rice was planted here, but I only discovered the photos today, sorry.... Anyway for anyone who is unfamiliar with rice planting here is a very basic introduction. After being plowed the rice fields are flooded and then plowed again twice - once as the water is first put in and then again when it is "full" . At this stage it is also leveled as flat as possible. A few days later the fields are ready for planting. Most farmers now use ride-on planting machines so compared to the past when everything was planted by hand it is not such a back breaking job (unless you are the female of the household, but I'll come to that in a minute)., but still pretty time consuming. The machines are pretty amazing (well to an uneducated Kiwi they are!). The trays of rice plants are placed on the machine and it pulls off a few plants at a time and buries them in the mud at set intervals. The driver just needs to keep driving in a straight line!
Unfortunately the machines are not perfect though and this is where the women come in.... they get to plod into the rice fields after the machine has finished and fill in the gaps that the machine has missed. Back breaking work that I have so far managed to avoid....

In my own garden the weeds are piling up, and with more rain forecast chances of clearing them are not looking good. There are now cucumbers, peppers, and tomatoes ripening everyday, but I think I am going to have to find a good "crow scarer" soon if I want to actually harvest any of the tomatoes. Right now there are lots of lovely ripe tomatoes scattered all over the garden - most of them with big holes in them!
The other thing that is "ripening" in the garden at the moment is the artichokes. Actually Tom wanted to eat them, but having experienced the painstaking task of preparing artichokes for cooking I was more interested in letting them flower. I think Tom agrees now that that was the right decision as they are looking beautiful in the garden now. Even the builder took a photo on his mobile telephone yesterday!

Slow Progress

I have heard from many people that building a house is a frustrating process. So far our experience has been the same! Actually the people who are building it for us have been really good in general - they didn't even complain when I asked to move a doorway, re-angle the stairs and build a couple of extra walls to make a window seat for me to read my books on (oops - for "guests" to read their books on....). But, the roof has been the biggest problem so far. As I've said before it is the rainy season here, but last week we had an incredible run of beautiful weather - definately enough to put the roof on! The preparations all seemed to be made, but the roofing people just never turned up. Anyway, we eventually discovered that the materials for the roof hadn't arrived yet (they are imported from America) hence the delay. And then of course after they finally did arrive it really poured with rain for a couple of days halting work again.... But, I am happy to say that today it was all action here and not only is the roof over half finished, the outside walls are also half on. The ceilings inside were also put in today so the place is really starting to look like a "house".

On a different note, the garden is definately not slowing down at the moment. The combination of lots of rain and very warm days has meant that the weeds in particular have taken off! I really need a whole week in the garden to clear them, but as I have outdoor education programs all next week and my live-in baby-sitter/weeder/vegetable collector leaves tomorrow morning I think it will be another week before I can actually attack them. Maybe I'll just get the weed-eater onto them! The tunnel house is also empty now so I really need to start preparing it to plant some more of my zillions of tomato seedlings. Any WOOFers welcome!!!
Rain, rain and more rain! The creeks have turned into rivers!







The grape vine has finally produced it's first grapes. Now if only the leaves would spread over the whole support we would be able to have some shade too.....








A small zucchini that turned a little bit too big overnight....

By the way, the sunflower at the top of the page is one of the many self-sown seedlings that I transplanted earlier this year. You may remember that I wasn't sure if they were sunflowers or zinnias..... all I can say is I'm glad I planted them at the back of the garden. They are now making a nice, very tall fence!

New Jam Season

As the temperature creeps higher and higher here the strawberries and wild strawberries disappear, but in their place come new fruit just waiting to be made into jam. Thanks to Mum and Mickey I also now have a great supply of dried apricots to keep producing all year round! One of the latest editions to my "range" is Loquat and Apricot Jam. Unfortunately it was not a good year for loquats due to heavy rain while they were flowering, so there is very limited stock. This is probably a good thing actually as although it tastes pretty good, peeling and stoning loquats is not the easiest task!

Tonight I also made a discovery that will hopefully make my jam making a lot more consistent. Jam really does set when it reaches 220 degrees! Well fresh apricot jam does. To be honest I was a little doubtful of my new thermometer, but decided to risk it tonight and stopped cooking the jam at 220 degrees even though it looked too runny. The result - perfectly set jam! Well it looks pretty good at this stage. I guess the test will be tomorrow when it is spread on my toast...... Anyone want to pop over for breakfast?

"Home"

This July I will have officially been living in Japan for 10 years. Since we started building our new “guest house” I have been thinking a lot about the concept of “home” and I have decided that I am one of the lucky people who has two equally important “homes”. There are many things about Japan that I love and often there are times when I feel more at home here in my little community of old people than I do when I go back to New Zealand and am surrounded by people I don’t know, listening to a new type of English spoken by teenagers that I don’t understand and watching dramas on TV that are completely foreign to me. At other times I get excited when I find something here in Japan that is related to New Zealand. Last week I raced across the supermarket when I saw the distinctive “Cadbury” purple display box only to discover that it was not filled by Cadbury chocolate, but by Cadbury chewing gum. A great disappointment! More luck at another supermarket though when I found they stocked New Zealand Hokey-Pokey icecream. Of course whenever anyone comes to visit they are giving huge lists of things to bring with them. There are some things about New Zealand

that I can never do without - of course family is one of them (by the way for anyone who is feeling a little shocked by the above photo - no I haven't aged a lot lately, it is just my mother helping out in the garden!).

So anyway, back to the house story….. after Sunny suggested “Kiaora Cottage” as a name for our new guest house (which, by the way I think is a great name, but Tom is still thinking….) I have thought more and more about how to incorporate New Zealand into the house and into the garden. My friend is making me some stained glass windows to put into the house and yesterday we decided to try and incorporate some New Zealand native plants into them. And that got me to thinking about how important it is to me to have little touches of New Zealand in my garden. And then when I thought about it I realised that I currently have 4 New Zealand natives in my garden that I have grown from seed, bought here or “smuggled” in from Dad’s garden in New Zealand.

So just in case you are interested here they are….

I know they look like weeds, but they are actually "Renga Renga Lillies". No flowers yet, but as they were grown from seed I guess they are just taking there time.











Another tree grown from seed that is still waiting to flower is my "Kowhai Tree". Apparently they take at least 7 years to flower and mine has been planted for about 6 years, so maye next year I will get to see the beautiful yellow flowers.....







One tree that isn't short of flowers is my "Manuka". I have two that I managed to buy here - one white and one yellow and have also got three very small ones that I started from seeds.






My final native was dug out of my father's back garden and is a "Cabbage Tree". I think there are about 4 planted around the garden and another two in pots.